


Lame Ducks Don't Do Well As Parental Figures

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-29
Updated: 2011-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-28 10:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/306701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Jenna really does not want to be lame in any sense of the word.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Lame Ducks Don't Do Well As Parental Figures

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through 2x13 "Daddy Issues." This fic stemmed from conversations speculating about Jenna's motivation in introducing Andie Star to Damon.

"He's ridiculously _hot_!" Jenna whispers to her niece as their dinner guest plays video games with Jeremy.

"Shhhh!" Elena says like he can possibly hear her from the living room. "He's an ass," Elena whispers back.

Jenna has another comeback for that ( _his ass is very fine_ ) but she keeps it to herself. Elena obviously doesn't like Stefan's brother, and there is probably a good reason for that.

All the same, his presence in her house just reminds Jenna that she always intended to be the _cool aunt_ and never the parental figure, and her appreciation for Damon Salvatore no doubt makes her neither. It just makes her lame.

Jenna really does not want to be lame in any sense of the word.

 

 

She notices from time to time, that Elena says something like _Ugh, Damon_ if Bonnie or Caroline mentions Stefan's brother; lots of times she rolls her eyes and her mouth gets tight. A few times, Jenna stumbles upon the two of them talking about something, but Elena doesn't have any annoyance on her face, she's intent on what he's saying and almost eager to follow his lead. It's curious to her that with her friends she acts one way, but with the man in question she's entirely different.

Usually Jenna has no idea what they're talking about (or they quit talking when she comes in the room), and she feels out of the loop, but she supposes that's how a parental figure should feel. She likes that, because God knows she sucks at this whole parenting gig anyway, so maybe if she's a little clueless, she's getting something right.

She asks Ric while they're sitting on the couch at home after the Miss Mystic Falls pageant, "Do you think there's something going on with Damon and Elena?"

Ric looks surprised by the question, but he ponders his answer before giving it. Then he shakes his head. "No. I mean, Elena's with Stefan. You know her better than me, but she doesn't strike me as the kind of girl who'd play both of them."

"Oh, no, she wouldn't ever do anything like that--it's just. I mean, you know. You were there. Today, when they were dancing--it was, well..." Jenna had seen it on both of their faces, in equal measure. A little breathless wonder, and--at least she hopes she's not so lame she can't read sexual tension when she sees it. (She thinks she's got sexual tension with Ric, but he's not making any moves, so maybe she wouldn't know sexual tension even if it beat her upside the head.)

He takes a sip of his beer, swallowing slowly before saying, "Let me put it this way--if there's any feelings there, it's on Damon's side only."

"What?" Jenna asks, incredulous. "Why would Damon like Elena? She's way too young for him. It seems much more likely that she'd be attracted to that bad boy/older guy thing he's got going on."

Ric chuckles and looks at her suspiciously. "Is that how she would feel, or how you feel?"

"What?" she says again. She can feel her face reddening. "No! No. _No_."

He just stares at her with an expression somewhere between exasperation and indulgence.

"I swear, Ric. I'm over my bad boy phase. That was when I was much, _much_ younger. And that's what I'm saying about Elena; she's young. Now would be the time to sow her wild oats."

His expression turns thoughtful again. "How old do you think he is anyway? Elena's sort of an old soul herself--and I've been around them, when they're together, without Stefan, they sort of have this--I don't know, they just mesh, I guess."

"He's got to be close to 30, isn't he?" she asks, feeling fairly inept at assessing any situation.

Ric laughs out loud. "No. God, I think he's like 24. He just...seems older, I guess. But so does Stefan, you know? Isn't he like the most mature 17 year old you've ever met?"

Jenna considers that and nods as she comes the conclusion that she had no idea about anything. "I guess, now that you mention it."

"I wouldn't worry about it, if I were you," Ric says. His hand reaches over and squeezes her shoulder. "Elena would never go for Damon, I'm sure."

 

 

The night of the Founder's Day Festival she catches Damon and Elena kissing on the front porch. Like, making out, kissing.

Instantly, Jenna's mad. Mad at Elena for misbehaving, mad at Damon for being exactly what she'd been afraid he was, mad at herself for ignoring her instincts about it.

Elena won't talk to her even after she comes in the house, and then Jenna gets a call from the fire department about the Gilbert office building, so she doesn't have time to work on her niece and get a straight answer.

All hell breaks loose after that, John's in the hospital, and they have to attend Mayor Lockwood's wake, and some kind of big fight happens between Damon and Elena that nobody will tell her about except for Jeremy and his cryptic, "All you need to know is Damon's an asshole, trust me."

Every day that goes by that she doesn't say anything about what happened on the porch feels like one more giant step away from something she can't confront anymore.

(She's lame again, in other words.)

Ric comes into the kitchen and kisses her like he's never kissed her before after he and Elena get back from Duke. It's been weeks since he's really been around, and she knows he'd gotten cold feet for some reason (dead wife related she guessed), but with his mouth over hers, she finds nothing about him cold now.

She rejoices when he presses her against the island, shoving his hips tightly into hers. She can feel that he wants her, and it seems to scatter all the self-doubt she's been hauling around since he disappeared.

She feels his lips curve up into a smile and then he pulls away. "I should go," he whispers. "I'll call you tomorrow, and take you out on a real date."

"Ric..." She keeps a hand on his arm, trying to hold him there. She wants to say _forget about a real date, just fuck me_ but that might be a little desperate. (She's desperate, okay? She's wanted him since the first time she saw him at The Grill months ago. _Months ago_.)

"Tomorrow," he says, and then he kisses her again like he just can't help himself, and she tells herself she can wait one more day.

After he leaves, she marches right up to Elena's room. She's a woman on a mission.

 

 

"Hey, can I talk to you?" she asks, tapping on Elena's slightly ajar door.

Elena is pacing in the space right in front of her window, looking fairly agitated.

(Oh, that's right. She just spent all day with Ric _and_ Damon.)

"Sure," Elena says, and Jenna watches as she forces a smile onto her lips. She's obviously not wanting to confide anything, and these are the times Jenna wishes Miranda had, just once, given her any little clue, left behind some sort of handbook. _Anything_. She wishes she knew what to do to help this girl that she loves so much, this motherless, fatherless girl who has had to grow up too fast and too hard.

Elena plops down on her bed, sitting with her back against the headboard. "What's up?"

"I've wanted to talk to you about this for a while, but it's just never been a good time--" Elena nods, and her face is open, so Jenna plunges on, taking a seat on the far end of the bed. "We need to talk about what happened with you and Damon on the porch last week."

Elena sighs and looks away, which isn't what Jenna expects. She imagined defensiveness and deflection, but Elena says, "That was just a misunderstanding."

"I beg to differ. I saw it, Elena. Maybe my third person point of view is skewed, but I saw two people, deeply involved in what looked like an enjoyable activity--to both persons. One of which has a boyfriend, who just happens to be the brother of the other."

"It won't happen again. I've talked to Stefan about it. He knows. Don't worry, Jenna. It's all been...taken care of."

Jenna takes a deep breath. "You can't play with their feelings, Elena."

"Oh, my God, Jenna! I wouldn't, you know I wouldn't!" Elena jumps up from the bed, her agitation back suddenly. Jenna reaches out, but Elena evades her. "I mean, I didn't mean to. It...just happened. Sometimes, Damon--ugh! He just drives me nuts, you know? Like he just pushes all my buttons until all I want to do is retaliate. I just want to hurt him and wipe that smirk off his face, and make him realize how much he hurt me--" she breaks off unexpectedly, like she's just realized she's speaking aloud. Her hand flies up to her mouth and her eyes go wide.

Jenna stands up and grabs her niece by the upper arms. "How did he hurt you?" she demands.

Elena sags slightly, as though she's trying to loosen Jenna's hold on her, but Jenna only tightens her grip. "Elena?"

"He didn't hurt me physically--I swear, Jenna. He just...he's hurtful, sometimes, to me, and Stefan, even Jer, you know, he just--he's just a really sad person and so he does these things, sometimes, he acts without thinking and he--" She sighs as tears spring to her eyes. "He breaks my heart."

Without warning, Elena's head is on Jenna's shoulder, and she hugs her aunt the way she did when she was smaller, when Miranda had gone out to the store for an hour and left Jenna in charge. She can remember that so well, those few times when Elena's mother hadn't been around, and she'd fallen down and skinned her knee or elbow and the only one to run to was Aunt Jenna. On those occasions, she'd been needed and wanted in a way she'd never experienced before. It had been her hands and her kisses on owies that soothed both Elena and Jeremy and made Jenna love them so much, though she wasn't that much older than them. She'd had those motherly instincts, the innate ability to pat their backs just right and rock them against her chest in a way that calmed their tears.

Now, she holds her almost 18-year old niece, one that she is barely ten years older than, and she feels a sense of doom as Elena's soft sniffles turn into painful sobs. Whatever Elena is crying about is deeper than what she'll ever express.

Jenna knows, she's loved bad boys too, after all. But she's never loved a bad boy and his brother at the same time, and she's never had them both love her back.

 

 

A few days later, Ric suggests a little get together with Mason Lockwood, and he slides in that Damon wants to come. She agrees reluctantly, especially when Elena stays home instead of going out. What can she do? Ric sort of likes Damon, though she gets the feeling it's somewhat begrudgingly, and she doesn't understand it, but she decides to just roll with it.

What's that saying, keep your friends close and your enemies closer? Maybe she can get a better read on the man who has her niece all wound up.

She watches them, the way they dance around each other, how Elena's expression slides in and out from annoyance to curiousness, and sometimes when Damon doesn't know she's watching, there's this infinite sadness on her face.

It's not surprising to Jenna at all when Elena disappears halfway through the evening, though the fact that Damon sticks around is odd. He and Mason seem to have some kind of pissing contest going on that she can't figure out and later, after they've gone, she asks Ric about it.

"Who knows why Damon does anything he does?" he asks, shrugging.

She'd argue the point, but he's undressing her and kissing her neck, and she's sort of distracted because now that they've started doing this, she can't get enough.

Even so, later as she's drifting to sleep in Ric's arms, she can't help worrying about Elena, Damon, and Stefan.

 

 

She's been in the hospital for two days when Damon shows up in her room. She wakes to find him sitting in a chair at her bedside reading a magazine.

He looks up at her when she stirs slightly. He moves so quickly, he blurs around the edges, but she figures that's the Percocet. He hands her a stryofoam cup with a bendy straw in it.

"What are you doing here?" she asks. She sounds as drugged as she is.

"Just checking up on you. Are you alright?" he asks, his voice very polite, his amazing eyes full of concern.

(Whatever, Elena's a fool. He's _so_ beautiful.)

"I'll get there eventually."

"I'm sorry this happened to you, Jenna."

She'd laugh, but it hurts too much. "You're sorry I'm an idiot and I walked into a knife?"

His lips lift into a small smile, but he just shakes his head. "You're not an idiot," he says.

He's quiet for a moment, and Jenna feels uncomfortable, but she can't think of anything to say to make conversation. She's totally high after all. He leans forward and his eyes become magnetic. "You'll never try to hurt yourself ever again," he says, his voice very low and calm.

She feels lulled by it and replies in echo, "I'll never try to hurt myself ever again."

"You don't really like me, but you know I'll do anything to keep you, Elena, and Jeremy safe."

"Yes," she says.

His fingers brush over her cheek and he takes the cup from her hand after she takes a sip. "Sleep well, Jenna," he says. Her eyes close, but she swears she feels his lips on her forehead, and then she's asleep. When she wakes up, she feels foolish because she had a dream about Elena's boyfriend's brother.

 

 

When Damon and Elena walk into The Grill right after John, Jenna feels her ire go up even more. She just can't like Damon, even if he's inhumanly beautiful, and though she believes he'd take a bullet for Elena if it ever came to that, she wants him to stay away from her niece. She wishes she knew what to do to break up their strange friendship, but every time she's mentioned it to Ric, he sort of blows her off.

She watches John and Damon pretending to be happy to see each other, and she wonders what that's about. Just one of many secrets that rat bastard keeps, no doubt. She imagines John has more secrets than Fort Knox. He's probably got fourteen kids he's fathered and not raised at all.

Andie Star walks into The Grill a while after that, and hugs Jenna enthusiastically. They hadn't really been super close friends in high school--Andie had been one of those girls who always went after the guys she wanted and often beat Jenna to the punch, which of course annoyed Jenna. Even when Jenna did go after who she wanted, she didn't seem to have any finesse at all, so it was much easier on her ego not to hang out with Andie.

All the same, she'd always been a nice girl, and she liked Jenna despite the frosty way she'd treated her in high school.

She glances over and sees Damon at the bar, and an idea sprouts up out of nowhere.

 

 

The next time Jenna sees Andie, she's got this beautiful silk scarf tied around her neck in this abnormally stylish way and Damon Salvatore's hanging on her arm. Jenna gives herself a silent high five as she watches them nuzzling each other in a booth; that is until she turns around and sees the look on Elena's face.

Some days she'd rather be lame than parental at all, really. It's only on this day that she realizes she's both.


End file.
